Some years ago, I was the preferred candidate for an executive role at a global company. As part of my due diligence, I asked the CEO to send me a copy of their strategic plan. To my shock and surprise, I received the company’s annual budget. Needless to say, I withdrew my candidacy!

On another occasion, while working on a consultancy, I was shown the strategic plan for a major national organisation. What I read was a highly articulate strategic narrative for a 5-year time frame…..and that was it……no BHAGs (Big Hairy Audacious Goals), no specific objectives, actions, owners, or time frames.

These experiences highlight a pervasive problem in organisational leadership: the confusion between budgets and strategy, and the tendency to create elegant documents that lack the operational rigour necessary for execution. A budget is merely a financial reflection of decisions already made, while strategy is the deliberate choices about how to create competitive advantage and deliver value. Similarly, aspirational narratives without concrete implementation frameworks are exercises in wishful thinking rather than strategic planning.

American futurist, Joel Arthur Barker, said, “Vision without action is merely a dream. Action without vision just passes the time. Vision with action can change the world.”

The Foundation: Purpose, Vision, and Values

So once you’re clear on your purpose (why you exist as an organisation), vision (future direction) and your values (aspirational culture) you need to establish a strategic narrative. This will be helpful when communicating and presenting your strategy internally and externally.

However, achieving clarity on these foundational elements requires more than superficial mission statement exercises. Purpose must be authentic and differentiated—it should answer not just “why do we exist?” but “why do we exist in a unique and meaningful way?” Vision needs to be both inspirational and specific enough to guide decision-making. Values must be behavioural, not just aspirational—they should define how decisions are made when leadership isn’t in the room.

The strategic narrative that emerges should create a coherent story that connects daily actions to long-term aspirations. This narrative becomes your North Star for resource allocation, priority setting, and organisational alignment.

THE EXECUTION FRAMEWORK

The degree of impact and success of your strategy will largely be influenced and determined by the following processes and practices:

Strategic Architecture and Priority Setting

• Carefully identify approximately 4 to 6 strategic priorities reflective of your vision and strategy. This constraint is crucial—organisations that attempt to pursue too many priorities simultaneously achieve none effectively. Each priority should represent a distinct competitive advantage or capability you’re building.
• Craft a descriptive definition for each priority, ensuring that they will be understood by anyone who reads them. These definitions should include the “what,” “why,” and “how” of each priority. Consider developing simple, memorable language that can be understood at every organisational level.
• Assign owners to each strategic priority. Ownership extends beyond accountability to include empowerment. Strategic priority owners must have sufficient authority, resources, and organisational support to drive meaningful progress.

Operational Translation and Planning

• Develop short-term, medium-term, and long-term objectives for each priority. Create cascading objectives that connect quarterly milestones to annual goals to multi-year outcomes. Each timeframe should have specific success metrics and performance indicators.
• Ensure each objective has specific actions, timelines and owners. This is where strategy becomes executable. Actions should be specific enough that progress can be measured and responsibility can be clearly assigned. Consider using frameworks like OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) or similar goal-setting methodologies.
• Identify the year one priorities, which, therefore, becomes your initial annual business plan. The first year should focus on building foundational capabilities and achieving early wins that demonstrate progress toward longer-term objectives.

Documentation and Communication

• Document a composite plan encompassing the vision, purpose, values, and strategic/business plan. This document should be comprehensive yet accessible, serving as both a reference guide and communication tool. Consider creating different versions for different audiences—board presentations, employee communications, and operational guides.
• Launch the plan at a high level to key stakeholders. The engagement of staff is important. Strategy launch isn’t a one-time event but the beginning of an ongoing communication campaign. Employees need to understand not just what the strategy is, but why it matters and how their role contributes to its success.

Governance and Review Cycles

• Initiate quarterly business plan reviews (following the quarterly financial results). These reviews should examine both financial and strategic performance. The timing alignment with financial results creates natural opportunities to assess resource allocation effectiveness.
• During the review each owner presents achievements and challenges of the previous quarter and their focus for the next quarter. Structure these sessions to encourage honest assessment, problem-solving, and course correction rather than defensive reporting.
• Communicate high-level outcomes from the quarterly review to your people. Transparency builds trust and maintains engagement. Share both successes and challenges, along with any strategic adjustments being made.

Annual Strategy Refresh

• Prior to annual budget planning, schedule time to review your current business plan and develop your second-year annual business plan. The strategy should always drive your budget, not the other way around. This sequence is critical—let strategic priorities determine resource allocation, not financial constraints dictate strategic ambitions.
• At the end of your strategic plan cycle (typically three years), arrange a time to look back over the past three years and a time to look forward to create your next strategic plan. Build learning into your strategic process by conducting thorough post-mortems and environmental reassessments.

Additional Critical Considerations

Environmental Scanning and Adaptive Capacity

Successful strategy execution requires continuous environmental monitoring. Establish processes for tracking competitive dynamics, customer needs evolution, technological disruptions, and regulatory changes. Build scenario planning into your strategic reviews to maintain adaptive capacity when assumptions prove incorrect.

Resource Allocation and Investment Discipline

Strategy execution often fails due to resource dispersion rather than resource scarcity. Develop clear criteria for investment decisions that align with strategic priorities. Be prepared to defund initiatives that don’t contribute to strategic objectives, even if they’re profitable in isolation.

Cultural Alignment and Change Management

Strategy execution is fundamentally about changing organisational behaviour. Assess whether your current culture supports your strategic ambitions. If gaps exist, develop explicit change management initiatives that address mindsets, skills, and organisational structures that may impede progress.

Measurement and Performance Systems

Traditional financial metrics often lag strategic progress by months or years. Develop leading indicators that provide early signals of strategic success or failure. Consider balanced scorecards that include customer, internal process, and learning metrics alongside financial outcomes.

Risk Management and Contingency Planning

Every strategy contains assumptions that may prove false. Identify your most critical assumptions and develop monitoring systems to track their validity. Create contingency plans for scenarios where key assumptions fail.

Stakeholder Engagement and Coalition Building

Strategy execution requires support from multiple stakeholder groups—employees, customers, partners, investors, and sometimes regulators. Map key stakeholder interests and develop engagement strategies that build coalitions supporting your strategic direction.

Implementation Excellence

It’s wise to engage a facilitator to guide you through the above process so that every leadership team member can be fully present and contribute fully.

Consider expanding the facilitation approach to include diverse perspectives beyond the leadership team. Strategic planning benefits from input from high-potential employees, key customers, and external advisors who can challenge assumptions and provide fresh insights.

Creating a robust plan, engaging your team to the thrust of the plan, and allocating time to reviewing milestones and challenges will help ensure you achieve real growth, success, and increased capability.

THE STRATEGIC IMPERATIVE

If you choose to, your plan can be a helpful compass that galvanises and creates a motivating environment for every staff member in your company.

But strategy execution isn’t optional in today’s competitive environment—it’s an organisational imperative. Companies that master the discipline of executable strategy don’t just survive; they create sustainable competitive advantages that compound over time. They build organisational capabilities that enable them to execute subsequent strategies more effectively, creating a virtuous cycle of strategic success.

The difference between organisations that execute strategy effectively and those that don’t isn’t intelligence or resources—it’s discipline. Discipline in priority setting, discipline in resource allocation, discipline in measurement, and discipline in the hard work of organisational change. Master these disciplines, and your strategy becomes more than a plan—it becomes your competitive advantage.